The caravan of the Legion halted as Commander Dame looked out through a spy glass and sighed, handing it over to her Marshal. The command staff grouped up as the men and women of the legion cleaned rocks out of their boots and the Star Vipers moved up to get a sense of if they’d be needed soon enough.
“Its under siege.” Quartermaster McKellum said in his heavy accent as he spit out of the side of his mouth.
Dame gave the quartermaster an irritated side eye. “Obviously. We’ll have to break it to move forth.”
Elaina and Colay walked up to the command staff and past their guards on duty. “Sounds like battle ahead.” Colay said almost frothing at the mouth as he made eye contact with the calm and collected Marshal.
“You’ll have your chance Colay, but Elaina here is going to lead the mission. We need precision on this one.” He said between deep and steady breaths.
Commander Dame nodded. “Mount up with the Star Vipers. We don’t have good ground to camp or be caught out here. Clear us a path to the gates.”
Elaina looks to the Commander as the Commander’s eyebrows furrow at her and she nods coldly and turns on her heel, ignoring Colay fuming but looking to all of the Star Vipers lined up, holding the reigns of their horses.
--
Elaina led the expert Star Vipers along with Emerald and Colay up to secure a hell overlooking the battle zone. They’d quickly dispatched the vanguard units of the Broken with little fanfare, all of the unit moving with precision and expertise gained from the battles across the plains.
Elaina pulled out a spy glass and observed the hill that she determined as their objective. She passed the glass between the others watching from the hill. The siege weapons launched balls of sickening goop towards the fortified walls of Fort Calisco. They were unlike any trebuchet or catapult the legion had ever used. Creatures were built into the machine like beasts of burden with human faces. They were attached as if the siege engines were a part of their massive bodies. They barely looked like they could move on their own.
The horses all waited on the back side of the hill as Bindi Yelzin attended to them. Back home, he had always been attuned to the horses and their needs. The legion had taken full advantage of that as the Quartermaster had gained trust in his empathy with the strong and valuable horses they’d acquired at Sunstrider Camp. He petted his favorites and showed Clairmont Noter how to feed them his special treats without getting their fingers chewed on.
Colay bounded down the hill towards them. “We’re going to trot to the bottom of their hill, out of sight as best we can. As soon as we are there, Elaina and her snipers will fire from this hill and start to clear the way. We’ll then charge quickly up through their lines and clear the enemies at the top of the hill. Once its secured, the others will ride over to join us and we hope to use the siege weapons against their own people.”
Bindi petted his favorite stallion and pulled himself up into the saddle. “They’re ready for a fight.” He said obviously in regard to the horses. They mounted up and Colay, not normally known for his patience, was kept in check by the cavalry man as they rounded the hill towards the enemy.
It was like a perfect machine moving in attunement with each piece. The horse formation wheeled around and as the undead guarding the side of the hill noticed them, Elaina and the muskets of the squad started to pepper the hill with concentrated fire.
Bindi gave Colay the signal and the charge up the hill began. It was not an easy go of things with the rocky outcroppings and the uphill slope, but the horses were rested and well fed and in good spirits. So, they brought their riders up through the gunfire, chopping down the remaining Broken and climbing to the top of the hill.
Here at the top of the hill, the siege beast creatures sent a chill through the squad. Not only that, but also from this vantage, they could see the countless lines of Broken on the hills and in the valley to the west that moved on the Fort.
Colay charges as the big beasts, and they can do very little to defend themselves or strike back as he chops at them and dismembers them. The rest of the squad follows suit as grotesque arms, legs, and other body parts fall as they chop into them and bodily remove them piece by piece from the siege engines. Gore spills and sprays forth from the many open wounds on the creatures that are crafted into these catapults. Blood oozes out and guts spill as the horses trot around them and step into the gruesome mess, causing it to splash up and cover the legs of the soldiers.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Finally, as Elaina trots up onto the hill on horseback with the rest of the snipers, they have the equipment shut down and the beasts are vanquished. She notices the undead formations spread out in the valley leading up to the fort and on the lower hills. “Turn those weapons on their formations!” She commands, but she doesn’t hesitate as she moves up after dismounting and starts to work on how these big things can be properly aimed.
The leader of the broken forces below, a shadow witch with a rather impressive neck piece that drapes down the front of her body, one made of many skulls and fragments of others. She points up at the hill and the Hexed soldiers around her start to march in an orderly formation as she leads them, organized and ready to retake the hill.
Elaina won’t let that happen as she gets Colay, Bindi, Nomi Kennik, and Bindi Yelzin to use the horses as beasts of burden, turning the big devices so they face away from the fort and into the area of the Broken formations. She uses her own mechanical eye to spot the perfect angle to drop one of these grotesque boulders right down on top of that shadow witch.
“Loose.” She calls out as Bindi Yelzin releases one trigger and Clairmont the other. The stones fly out as the devices shake from the rocks being hurled out. The devices are normally anchored by those beasts that they killed, looking the worse for wear as they creak and bend and some parts snap. They won’t fire again without some repair that they don’t have time to perform.
The ground shook as the big rocks impacted into the formations. They were too tight to maneuver and save themselves as both rocks took out big chunks of the soldiers. One of them landed right in the spot where the Shadow Witch stood.
The enemy formation broke out into a run as they moved on the hill.
Elaina looked about at the numbers and at her own men. “Alright, we’ve done our part. Let’s get back to securing the route to the gates.” She mounted up on the horse and saw Colay rubbing his chin, looking at the weapons. She called to him, “We have to go... now!”
“We can’t leave these weapons here for them.” Colay said defiantly.
“We can’t do anything about it. They are too big to move.” Elaina shook her head.
One of the youngest members of the legion, Nomi Kennik, stepped up. “I have explosives on me that could wipe out this whole hill top.”
Colay, Nomi, and Elaina shared a look. Colay nodded, then Elaina nodded and spoke as she looked into Nomi’s eyes. “I need to take the others to clear the path. Plant your charges and then get out of here.”
Nomi didn’t waste any time as she pulled her pack off of her back and removed several crates off of the side of her horse as Elaina led the rest of the team down the hill and to the vanguard of the supply train of the Legion that moved its way towards the gates.
Nomi started to plant the explosives about the siege engines while working through the messy remains of the big beasts and the other bodies of the broken to create booby traps that would trigger the explosions. Sweat built under her heavy armor and along her brow as she knew the time she had to work was limited, but a certain amount of the explosives would be necessary to cause the hill to be unusable and to destroy the heavy wood and bone equipment here. The patter of the charging enemy heading up the hill grew from a dull echo to a large rumble of steps. She nodded as she looked over her handiwork and prepared to leave the hill when she noticed that one of the wires was disconnected. “Shit shit shit.” She started to run towards the sound of the steps.
She got to the wire and started to wrap it into the charge of the explosive as she saw the first of the Broken soldiers pouring up over the side of the hill. The connection was made and everything was in place. This spot would become a death trap for all these bastards charging up at her.
She looked down and saw the column of Legion forces heading up the road towards the gate of Fort Calisco and saw her squad mates flanking the road, already fighting off some of the Burned zombies. She looked back at the enemy charging up at her and pulled out her pistol, taking a shot at the one furthest ahead dropping it.
“Not a bad place to go.” And as she said it, the horse that Bindi had carefully picked for her trotted up beside her. She brushed the horses flank. “That a girl.” And she hopped up on the horse, wondering if they could make it before the blast ruined the place.
She hit the reigns and watched the horse dart down and away towards her squad mates. Her heart raced to the tune of the horse’s hooves as the rumble grew behind her. She could see the edge of the hill as the first wire was tripped and the explosion started to build out from the center of the hill outwards.
Bindi looked up from the back of the formation and watched as the explosion rocked the hill and sent a wave of disturbing heat across the valley and splashing off of the Fort’s thick stone walls. He strained to look out for Nomi, trying to spot a charging lancer down the hill, but he saw nothing before they started to engage the Broken more heavily, fighting up through their numbers to lead the Legion’s wagons and non-combat personnel.
Nomi crawled up from behind a boulder as she checked the horse’s health and found her wounded, but still able to ride. “We made it girl.” She gingerly hopped back into the mostly ruined saddle as she charged off to join the ranks of her friends and get into the safety of the fort with its big stone walls.